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Case Matching in Bavarian Relative Clauses: a Declarative, Non

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Case Matching in Bavarian Relative Clauses: a Declarative, Non Case Matching in Bavarian Relative Clauses: A declarative, non-derivational Account£ Þ Erhard W. Hinrichs Ý Tsuneko Nakazawa 1 Introduction Matching effects in German VP coordination and German free relatives, as in (1) and (2), have been discussed for quite some time, going back at least to Groos and van Riemsdijk (1981), as interesting phenomena for linguistic theorizing. More specifically, Ingria (1990) was the first to identify them as potential challenges to constraint-based and unification- based approaches to syntax such as HPSG and LFG. (1) a. Hans hilft und unterst¨utzt Frauen. Hans helps and supports women (dat/acc) ’Hans helps and supports women.’ b. * Hans hilft und unterst¨utzt M¨annern/M¨anner. Hans helps and supports men (dat)/men (acc) ’(intended) Hans helps and supports men.’ (2) a. Was Du mir gegeben hast ist pr¨achtig. What (nom/acc) you me given have is wonderful ’What you have given to me is wonderful.’ b. * Ich nehme wen/wem Du vertraust. I take who (acc)/who (dat) you trust ’ (intended) I take whomever you trust.’ The transitive verb hilft in (1) subcategorizes for a dative NP and is conjoined with the transitive verb unterstutzen¨ that requires an accusative object. This coordination of unlike verbs does not lead to ungrammaticality as long as the NPs in question exhibit the same morphology (e.g. Frauen in (1a) is the plural form for both dative and accusative case). However, for masculine gender no such morphological match exists. Therefore, (1b) is ungrammatical. Free relatives as in (2) exhibit the same pattern. In (2a), the w-pronoun was, which is the same for nominative and accusative case, can play double duty: it can fulfill the accusative requirement inside the free relative and the nominative requirement for the matrix clause. By contrast, in (2b) nehmen subcategorizes for an accusative object, while vertrauen re- quires a dative object. Since there is no identity in form between the dative w-pronoun wem and the accusative w-pronoun wen, (2b) is ungrammatical. £ The research reported in this paper is part of the Sonderforschungsbereich 441 Linguistic Data Structures funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. We wish to thank two anonymous referees and the participants of the 8th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. Ý Seminar f¨ur Sprachwissenschaft, Eberhard-Karls-Universit¨at T¨ubingen, Wilhelmstr. 113, D-72074 T¨ubingen, Germany; email: [email protected] Þ Language and Information Sciences, University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan; email: [email protected] The grammaticality of examples such as (1a) and (2a) are taken to pose a challenge to constraint-based or unification-based approaches to syntax. The reason is that such theories typically rely on identity constraints or structure sharing to enforce likeness of categories. However, the NP Frauen and the relative pronoun structurally seem to have to play a double role. They have to be viewed as exhibiting distinct case values. Since assignment of values to features is taken to be functional, examples such as (1) and (2) seem to test the limits of unification, as Ingria (1990) claims. A possible way out of the dilemma is to assume a subsumption check for the cases in question rather than unification or feature identity. The goal of this paper is to consider yet another construction, this time relative clauses in Bavarian dialects of German, in which morphological matching plays a crucial role. At first glance Bavarian relative clauses, which were first discussed by Bayer (1984), seem to require similar analytical tools as those suggested by Ingria (1990) and by Bayer and Johnson (1995). However, as we will argue, a closer look at the full set of data reveals that the analytical tools provided by unification-based or constraint-based grammar formalisms fully suffice to give a completely declarative analysis of the data. 2 Bavarian relative clauses – the data In Bavarian relative clauses, relative pronouns appear together with the complementizer wo as shown in (3). While the complementizer wo is invariant in form, the relative pronoun is inflected for number, case, and gender: den in (3a) and (3b) is masculine, accusative, singular; dem in (3c) is masculine, dative, singular. (3) a. Der Mantl *(den) wo i kaffd hob wor z’rissen. the coat (nom) which (acc) that I bought have was torn ’The coat which I bought was torn.’ b. Mir meng den Mantl (den) wo i kaffd hob. we like the coat (acc) which (acc) that I bought have ’We like the coat which I bought.’ c. Sie gem’s dem Mo (dem) wo mir g’hoifa hom. they give it the man (dat) who (dat) that we helped have ’They gave it to the man who we helped.’ In some, but not all, cases the presence of the relative pronoun is optional. In particular, the relative pronoun can be omitted if its syntactic case matches that of the head noun, as in (3b) and (3c). If the case of the head noun does not match that of the relative pronoun, as in (3a), then the presence of the relative pronoun seems obligatory. However, as the data in (4) show, presence of the relative pronoun is not always re- quired, even if the case of the head noun does not match that of the relative pronoun. (4) a. I sog’s dem Mo (der) wo im Gartn arwat. I say-it the man (dat) who (nom) that in-the garden works ’I’ll tell it to the man who works in the garden.’ b. I gib’s dera Frau (die) wo d’Muich bringd. I give-it the woman (dat) who (nom) that the-milk brings ’I give it to the woman who brings the milk.’ c. I schenk’s dem Kind (des) wo mid da Katz spuid. I give-it the child (dat) who (nom) that with the cat plays ’I give it to the child who plays with the cat.’ All examples in (4) are grammatical and exhibit a case mismatch between the head noun and the relative pronoun. What seems to be going on here, as Bayer (1984) already observed, is that relative pronouns in nominative case are exempt from the case matching requirement otherwise necessary for relative pronoun omission. It turns out that relative pronouns can be omitted not only if they are assigned nom- inative case by the governing verb of the relative clause, but also if they are assigned a case other than nominative, as long as the form of the relative pronoun is identical to the respective nominative case. Examples (5) illustrate this phenomenon. (5) a. Der Mantl *(den) wo i kaffd hob wor z’rissen. the coat (nom) which (acc) that I bought have was torn ’The coat which I bought was torn.’ b. Die Lampn (die) wo i g’seng hob wor greißlich. the lamp (nom) which (acc) that I seen have was ugly ’The lamp that I saw was ugly.’ While the masculine accusative pronoun den is obligatory in (5a), the feminine ac- cusative pronoun die in (5b) can be omitted, even though it does not match nominative case of the head noun Lampn. The crucial difference between the two pronouns concerns the respective paradigms shown in (6). (6) Paradigms of Bavarian relative pronouns masc neutr fem plur nom der des die die acc den des die die dat dem dem der(a) dene(n) Note that the feminine singular nominative and accusative forms are the same (die), while this is not the case for the corresponding masculine singular forms (der/den). Hence, we seem to be faced with a similar pattern as in the case of the coordination and of the free relative clause data shown in section 1: a case mismatch seems to be admissible for relative pronoun omission in Bavarian as long as there is match in morphological form with the nominative. The data in (7) show that omission of relative pronouns is restricted to non-extraposed relative clauses in Bavarian. It turns out that the presence of a relative pronoun is always required in extraposed relative clauses, even if the case of the head noun matches the case of the relative pronoun, as in (7). (7) a. Sie gem dem Mo a birn *(dem) wo mir g’hoifa hom. They give the man (dat) a pear whom that we helped have ’They give a pear to the man whom we have helped.’ b. Dem Kind song mir nix *(dem) wo mir an Apfe schenka. the child say we nothing whom that we an apple give ’We say nothing to the child to whom we give an apple.’ The true generalization about relative pronoun omission, thus, has to be restricted to non-extraposed relative clauses. This adjacency requirement between nominal head and relative clauses was already pointed out by Bayer (1984). On the basis of the data in (4) and (5) Bayer exempts nominative pronouns from the case matching requirement by assuming that relative pronouns in the nominative case and in all other cases which match the nominative form, carry the feature [ OBLIQUE] and by letting [ OBLIQUE]-marked pronouns delete freely. Where we differ from Bayer is that he presents an analysis of the data that is intrinsically derivational and relies on a specific ordering between various grammatical principles such as case transmission, [ OBLIQUE]-transmission in COMP and deletion in COMP. What we will show in the next section is that such derivational metaphors are entirely unnecessary and that, instead, a purely declarative account can easily be stated in a constraint-based theory such as HPSG (Pollard and Sag, 1994).
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